Where I Stood
by piaffe417
Summary: You didn't plan for it to happen, of course. Who would? What woman in her right mind would decide to place another woman – another beautiful, intelligent, formidable woman – in her place beside the man she loved? Certainly not you - not at first anyway.


**Author's Note: **This little number has been hanging around on my hard drive for the better part of six months so I thought it was time to let it see the light of day. (We can only edit them so much, you know?) Probably not one of my stronger fics, but the Zoe-Cal-Gillian triangle always intrigued me, especially because Zoe always seemed to respect Gillian even though it was clear she didn't really like her. So between that interest and the brilliance that is Missy Higgins and her music, I give you the following (none of which I'm even remotely close to owning). Reviews happen when you click the tab at the bottom. Cheers!

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_There were sounds in my head  
Little voices whispering  
That I should go and this should end.  
Oh and I found myself listening…_

_'Cause I don't know who I am, who I am without you_  
_All I know is that I should._  
_And I don't know if I could stand another hand upon you_  
_All I know is that I should._  
_'Cause she will love you more than I could_  
_She who dares to stand where I stood.  
__**Where I Stood**_, Missy Higgins

To say that Gillian Foster was the beautiful and unwitting catalyst that led to the demise of your marriage would be unfair.

It would also be true, of course - but truth and fairness aren't mutually exclusive terms. You learned that from Cal Lightman a long time ago.

As intelligent as Gillian is, however, you're rather surprised that she seems somehow unaware of the significant role she played in your divorce. Or perhaps she chooses not to think about it, for fear that if she were to give it a bit of thought, she might come to conclude that it was her deepening friendship with the man whom you now refer to as your ex-husband (when you aren't calling him other things) played a large part in the dissolution of your union. Kindhearted as she is, she would undoubtedly feel too much guilt if she realized how it had all played out.

Yet would the guilt be hers alone to bear? It shouldn't be. Gillian Foster only became the catalyst because you made her so. Metaphorically speaking, she was the match – the one who lit the flame - but it was you who struck the spark.

You didn't plan for it to happen, of course. Who would? What woman in her right mind would decide to place another woman – another beautiful, intelligent, _formidable_ woman – in her place beside the man she loved? What sane person would choose her own replacement?

Certainly not you - not at first, anyway.

On your long ago wedding day, you had no intention of being replaced. You planned (and promised) to stay by Cal Lightman's side until death parted you. And you meant it. He did too and life was good.

Then when Emily came along, you saw the way he looked at her – and later, the way she looked back at him – and you continued to believe that it might just work out in the end. You allowed yourself to hope that, because of the family you'd become, the two of you – so volatile and confrontational in your natures - might be able to find a way to put aside the differences that caused so many arguments and mellow into a quiet and shared old age.

Hope, as it turned out, was delusional. (Just like Cal always said, it was truth _or_ happiness – never both). And though he seemed solid through those early years, the first cracks in your hope appeared long before Gillian Foster took residence in Cal's life (and therefore yours as well). You probably should have known then that it was only a matter of time until the cracks between the two of you undermined the foundation of your entire marriage.

But you didn't. You continued to hold out for happiness over truth. (Cal would, of course, have told you you'd gone mad – and he'd have been right. But the subject would have been just one more thing to fight about and the two of you certainly didn't need that at the time.)

Emily was in elementary school and Cal worked for the Pentagon when it all fell apart. You had just gained a foothold in the U.S. Attorney's office – a long-held aspiration that should have given you a sense of contentment and security as your family carved out the seemingly solid suburban Washington D.C. life you'd always thought you'd wanted. Yet you never could put your finger on exactly when the cracks began to spread, when and why you and Cal began to fight more frequently and about things that had never really been issues in the past. From the outside, everything about your lives appeared so perfect that you ignored the warning signs - like all the mornings you found yourself heading into the office earlier and working later – that pointed to an unconscious effort to avoid answering the difficult questions that had begun to form in your mind.

They were agonizing, those final years of your marriage. Looking back, you realize now that they were the most difficult because at no point had you stopped loving Cal – and you still do in some ways – and you couldn't wrap your brain around the idea of divorcing a man whose smile could still catch your eye across a room and make your knees wobble. Divorce, in your mind, needed to come from an angry place – one where one of you cheated on the other (impossible when one half of the couple was versed in the science of facial cues and lies) or gambled away the college fund (also impossible when said facial cue expert is banned from Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Reno). It didn't make sense simply to divorce someone just because you couldn't bear to watch him crumble under the weight of his own self-imposed expectations for his role as husband and father.

It still shocks you that, in the end, that's what happened.

March 20, 2003: the date that lives in infamy in your mind. It dawned the same as any other early spring day in D.C. – a hint of winter still lingered, yet the buds on the trees indicated that spring was ready to take the reins any moment. You had a full docket of cases to deal with and Cal had been more surly than usual for a solid week, so you left home early again, careful to remind a distracted Cal no less than four times that he needed to drop Emily off at school on his way to the Pentagon and not to forget her pink fuzzy scarf because it would still be chilly when she went out that morning for recess.

"I've got it, love," he told you with an absent, dismissive wave as you darted out the door without even stopping to kiss him goodbye. He never even looked up from the file he was reading at the breakfast table – the same file he'd been staring at for the past few weeks but wouldn't discuss with you.

You should have made time for the kiss. You know that now – and you would have if you'd known that everything was about to change for you that day. But you're not psychic, nor are you able to discern a micro expression from the barest blink, so you went about your day as though it were any other.

And while you were at work, Gillian Foster entered your life with such subtle silence that you never even heard the door open.

You don't know the details – and you don't want to. They wouldn't make any difference now that things are over anyway. Sure, you've pieced parts of it together, both from what Cal's told you in passing and things that Emily has mentioned off-handedly. You know he was forced by his superiors to enter counseling with the Pentagon's in-house therapist, one Dr. Gillian Foster, and in the process he wound up finding a business partner, a best friend, and a piece of himself that he'd never realized was missing. (If it were a movie, all of it would have happened to the sounds of a sweeping orchestral score and every woman in the audience would have reached for tissues at the conclusion, you're certain.)

But more telling than the story itself is what you've seen with your own eyes; it's never taken an expert at reading faces to interpret the intimacy that exists between Cal and Gillian. It's right there on display for the entire world to see – the way they are tuned into each other at all times, even when they're separated, and the complete comfort they have in their shared space when they're together. The first time you recognized it, you were surprised – but not for the reasons that a typical doting wife be upon seeing her husband developing feelings for another woman.

Instead, you were surprised because you realized that – for the first time since you'd met him - you _wanted_ Cal to have feelings for someone else.

It made sense when you thought about it logically (though logic wasn't as comforting as you hoped it would be). You only wanted to _divorce_ Cal, not abandon him, leave him alone and adrift in the world. He wasn't good on his own; he'd never admit that, of course, but it was the truth. He needed someone to call him back across the line when he stepped over it (frequently) – and that someone could only be someone he respected, which shortened the list of names considerably. But the more you saw them together, the more you saw that Gillian Foster filled the bill.

She argued with him when he wasn't seeing all of the facts. She belittled him when he came out of left field with a preposterous statement. She never backed away when he moved his face within inches of hers in attempt to stare her down.

And when his brilliance was steered correctly and on course to do good, she stepped back and let him shine.

You never doubted that, with Gillian in his life, there would always be someone by his side if you stepped away. She would take your place – _could _take your place - and you realized rather quickly that you would give it to her.

And so, shortly after Cal quit work at the Pentagon (in a very true-to-character huff) and left with Gillian Foster in tow to set up the Lightman Group, you left him.

That's the important part of the story, of course: _You_ ended the marriage. _You_ left your husband, hired an attorney friend who specialized in divorce proceedings, and worked out a generous shared custody arrangement that would help to keep Emily's young life as stable as possible under the circumstances. _You_ did all of those things and you did them because you couldn't bear to watch him turn himself inside out in a desperately doomed attempt to be a good husband (something he had no foundation for) while simultaneously trying to be a good father (something he was a natural at) _and_ make a living as a human lie detector.

He expected to be able to do all three and you feared he might die trying if you let him continue.

And so _you_ left because you had finally received an answer to the question you had long-feared to ask: No, you and Cal weren't destined for the long haul. You couldn't be his touchstone because you realized that you simply weren't equipped for the job. Gillian Foster was.

(Damn her anyway.)

And there it is. There's the real reason you don't like Gillian Foster - the reason that is, of course, not to be confused with the reasons that Emily, Cal, and even Gillian herself seem to believe that you have for not liking her: She's stronger than you.

You hate that.

(Ironically, though, it's that strength that you really should appreciate about her. After all, she's the one who set you free – though it turns out Hallmark doesn't make a card to commemorate that particular sentiment. You've checked.)

The sting has lessened over time, thankfully, and now you don't dread visits like the one you're making to The Lightman Group today. Your plan is to talk to Cal about college visit planning for Emily before you head to the airport and back to Chicago. (You could have talked – and argued – about it over the phone, of course, but you've both learned in the years since the divorce that sometimes it's easier to have your discussions in person. That way Cal can see from your facial expression that you're serious when you say that Emily needs to consider Northwestern for its programs and not just because it's close to you.)

Also, you want to see him. You can't help it; it's an old reflex that hasn't gone away just because your marriage is no more. (Deep down, there's a tiny part of you that holds out hope that you were wrong about Cal and Gillian too. These visits never give that hope reason to live, but you can't seem to kill it completely either.)

Gillian is there with him now, in his office. She's always there, you know, and you don't announce your presence to the pair right away; instead you stand just outside the doorway and watch them work. It used to be that seeing them act with such lightness and ease around one another was a knife through your heart, but enough time has passed that you're comfortable with it – you've even warmed a bit. There's a genuine relaxation about Cal when Gillian is in his presence, a subtle sense of contentment that you hadn't thought he was even capable of achieving until you witnessed it firsthand.

Today is a perfect example of this:

Cal is characteristically sprawled into his chair, one Blundstone boot up on the desk as he leans sideways on the arm rest, head propped lazily against his hand while he listens intently to Gillian. As usual, his uniform consists of a black button-down shirt and crumpled jeans – an ensemble that is in stark contrast to Gillian's prim pencil skirt and fitted blue sweater.

"Are you sure?" Cal asks her, face quizzical.

"Am I ever unsure about these things?" Gillian counters evenly. The pursed position of her lips is clear to you, even from outside the door.

Cal frowns with annoyance. "Well…" He trails off, pauses, then regroups, hand waving absently while his mind whirls. "I thought we…"

He trails off again, fumbles a bit. "You know… It's kind of like…"

Gillian steps closer, bemused. "…the time we did the crowd assessment for the Secret Service before the ambassador's speech last fall? Only this time with less security and more livestock?"

"Bloody hell, Foster," is all he manages and Gillian chuckles softly.

"So we're taking the Maryland State fair job then?" she asks him.

"Are you asking because you've already taken it _and_ wangled a year's supply of elephant ears out of the deal?" he needles her.

"No," she shakes her head, then adds with grave seriousness, "I held out for funnel cakes."

Cal wipes a weary hand across his face, then tilts his face up so that his eyes meet Gillian's. When their eyes lock, the two burst instantly into a fit of laughter that is so practiced that you feel your stomach tighten involuntarily with a jealous pang you haven't felt in some time. (It's usually just when you think you're past it that the twinges sneak up on you. This is obviously one of those instances.)

You know what's going to happen next. You'll walk through the door and allow the confident click of your heels on the tile to announce your presence before you speak to either of them. Their laughter will trail off quickly as they compose themselves enough to give perfunctory greetings, which Gillian will also turn into a good-bye so that she can leave you and Cal alone to talk. He will right himself in the chair, arms splayed forward across the desk in what even you can spot as a semi-defensive position while he awaits the reason for your dropping by – but while he does that, his eyes will move past you and follow Gillian Foster until she's out of sight. She is, after all, the one he relies on for support in all things (impromptu meetings with ex-wives included).

(Also, he's fond of watching her walk away from him. Cal's never been shy about his interest in Gillian's – or any woman's – physique.)

Yes, in just a moment, you'll walk through the door and stand for a brief moment in your old place beside Cal. You'll argue with him, he'll argue back, and for a split second you might even feel a fleeting spark shoot between you. But it won't be the same. It can't be because the space that you'll occupy isn't yours anymore. It hasn't been for some time. That space beside Cal doesn't even fit like it used to (not, one could easily argue, that it ever really fit in the first place). It's become that old pair of jeans that you just can't get to zip up, no matter how many times you try.

Gillian Foster has taken that space beside Cal Lightman and made it her own. She's filled it because you gave it to her and now you have to live with that decision. It wasn't easy but it was the right thing to do. (It's just too bad that doing the right thing and feeling good about it aren't mutually exclusive.)

_And I won't be far from where you are if ever you should call.  
You meant more to me than any one I've ever loved at all.  
But you taught me how to trust myself,  
And so I say to you, this is what I have to do._

_'Cause I don't know who I am, who I am without you,_  
_All I know is that I should._  
_And I don't know if I could stand another hand upon you,_  
_All I know is that I should._  
_'Cause she will love you more than I could,_  
_She who dares to stand where I stood._  
_She who dares to stand where I stood.__  
__**Where I Stood**_, Missy Higgins

FIN


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